Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage and crisis negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Chris's Instagram: https://instagram.com/thefbinegotiator
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:59 - Negotiation
6:50 - Reason vs Emotion
21:45 - How to listen
30:35 - Negotiation with terrorists
32:43 - Brittney Griner
34:21 - Putin and Zelenskyy
41:41 - Donald Trump
48:52 - When to walk away
53:06 - Israel and Palestine
1:00:45 - Al-Qaeda
1:06:15 - Three voices of negotiation
1:14:40 - Strategic umbrage
1:17:46 - Mirroring
1:20:57 - Labeling
1:28:24 - Exhaustion
1:30:38 - The word "fair"
1:33:34 - Closing the deal
1:35:32 - Manipulation and lying
1:37:26 - Conversation vs Negotiation
1:48:45 - The 7-38-55 Rule
1:52:45 - Chatbots
2:02:07 - War
2:03:39 - Advice for young people

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We used to get asked by FBI leadership, when is this gonna be over?

And the answer would be when the bad guys feel like they've gotten everything they can.

Now dissecting that statement, you're talking about when they feel like they got everything they can.

So the key to kidnapping negotiations are the feelings.

Not the bad guys, we're talking about feelings, kidnappers feelings.

Which drives everything, doesn't matter what human endeavor it is.

The following is a conversation with Chris Voss, former FBI hostage and crisis negotiator, and author of Never split the difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Chris Voss.

What is it like negotiating for a hostage with a kidnapper?

What is the toughest part of that process?

The toughest part is if it looks bad from the beginning and you gotta engage in a process anyway.

That makes you nervous, that if you were to observe a situation where there's general negotiation or it's a hostage negotiation, what makes you think that this is going to be difficult?

If they wanna make it look like they're negotiating, but they're not.

Like in the 2004 timeframe, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was executing people on camera for the publicity.

And they wanted to make it look like they were negotiating.

So they'd come on and they'd say, if you don't get all the women out of, Iraqi women out of the jails in Iraq in 72 hours, we're gonna kill a hostage.

That was 1 of the demands in 1 of the cases in that timeframe.

Now, first of all, even if we'd have been willing, the US government, the coalition, would have been willing to do that, it wouldn't have been able to happen in 72 hours.

So is it an impossible ask from the beginning?

Like they're trying to make it look like they're talking reasonably, but they're not.

If they've made a demand that you just, even if you wanted to do, you couldn't do.

So then what makes that very difficult is, in kidnappings especially, you're working with family members, you're coaching people.

Bad guys are in touch with family members, or if they're not directly in touch with family members, the other thing that Al-Qaeda was doing at that time was they didn't give us a way to talk to them.

They're making statements in the media, but then not leaving their phone number, if you will.

They're asking you to do something you can't do.

They're not giving you a way to talk to them.

So you gotta get with the family and discuss with the family how you're gonna approach things.

Now the family definitely wants to know, is this gonna help?

So a bunch of cases like that in that timeframe.

And when it's slim and none, I'll take slim, but it's still very, very slim.

And there were a number of people that were killed in that timeframe before the tide finally got turned.

And it was hard dealing with families at the time.

Can you negotiate in public versus like a direct channel in private?

Their channel of choice tells you an awful lot.

And if they're choosing the media, then that means there's people they're trying to appeal to.

That means in their view, there's such a thing as good media.

So if there's good media, there's bad media.

It just, unfortunately, it had to go through a number of iterations before they got the message and quit.

In that negotiation, do you think about the value of human life?

Is there, how do you enumerate, not enumerate, quantify the value of human life?

Yeah, that's like beauty seen in the eye of the beholder.

So that was the first lesson on any hostage negotiation, really any negotiation.

Like it doesn't matter what it is to you, matters what it is to the other side.

1 of the things, especially in your conversation I listened to with Andrew.

By the way, you guys, Another thing I really liked about that conversation, first of all, I think the world of him.

And you released it on my birthday, I appreciate that.

But empathy is in the eye of the beholder in every negotiation, whether it's over a car, a house, collaboration in your company with the bad guys.

Now, the nice thing about kidnapping for ransom, if there's an actual ransom demand, an actual demand, is it's a mercenary's business.

They're going to take what they could get.

They tend to be really good at figuring out how much money somebody has.

So, and again, I'll keep drawing business analogies.

You're looking for a job with an employer.

There's a market price of the job, and then there's what the employer can pay you.

Now, maybe the market price of the job market's 150 grand.

Employer can pay you 120, but it's a great job.

You know, we were talking about Elon a minute ago.

Like, I'd work minimum wage to follow him around.

What are the value other than the dollars?

These are all things that the bad guys are good, in kidnapping, are good at figuring out.

So the value of human life to them is gonna be what can they get.

A crazy thing in the kidnap business, we used to get asked by FBI leadership, When is this gonna be over?

So the key to kidnapping negotiations are the feelings of the bad guys.

We're talking about feelings, kidnappers' feelings.

I should say, for a little bit of context, I just talked yesterday with a guy named Sam Harris.

if you know Sam, but Sam, and because I was preparing for a conversation with you, I talked to him about empathy versus reason.

Empathy is somewhere between useless and erroneous and leads you astray and is not effective.

And the 2 fine lines I would draw is, first, what is your definition of empathy?

And then Secondly, how do people actually make up their minds?

And I'm gonna flip it, I'm gonna go with how people make up their minds.

You make up your mind based on what you care about, period.

You see some guy swimming out off the coast of the ocean and you see a shark coming up behind him.

If It's Adolf Hitler out there, you're cheering for the shark.

You might actually feel bad for the shark because it's gonna taste bad.

Yeah, he eats Adolf Hitler, you're gonna leave a bad taste in your mouth, even if you're a shark.

So you're making up your mind on every circumstance is based on what you care about.

Your reason is based on what you care about from the beginning.

If you define it as sympathy, which it was never meant to be sympathy, ever.

I keep getting etymology and entomology mixed up.

Etymology being, right, where words came from, the origin, entomology being bugs.

Right, so I like etymology where did something come from also like entomology anyway etymology though my understanding from my research The original definition of empathy was an interpretation of a German word where people were trying to figure out what the artist was trying to convey.

And so it was always about understanding where somebody was coming from, but not sharing necessarily that same thing.

So then when I was with the FBI and I first started collaborating with Harvard, Bob Mnookin wrote a book, Beyond Winning, second chapter is The Tension Between Empathy and Assertiveness, still the best chapter on empathy I've ever read anywhere.

And Bob writes in his book, Bob was the head of the program on negotiation.

He's also agreed to be interviewed for a documentary about me and my company that hasn't been released yet, but it should be released sometime this year.

So Bob's definition of empathy said not agreeing or even liking the other side.

Don't even gotta like them, don't gotta agree with them.

Just straight understanding where they're coming from and articulating it, which requires no agreement whatsoever.

That becomes a very powerful tool, like ridiculously powerful, and if sympathy or compassion or agreement are not included, you can be empathic with anybody.

I was thinking about this when I was getting ready to sit down and talk to you, because you use the word empathy a lot.

I don't agree with where he's coming from.

Early on the Ukraine-Russian war, I saw an article that was very dismissive of Russia that said, Russia's basically Europe's gas station.

So if you're in charge, and the way you feed your people is via an industry that the entire world is trying to quit.

The whole world is trying to get out of fossil fuels.

If that's how you feed your people, If you don't come up with an answer to that, the people that you've taken responsibility for are gonna die alone in the cold and the dark.

They're gonna freeze and they're gonna die.

All right, so that doesn't mean that I agree with where he's coming from or any of his means.

But how does this guy see things in his distorted world?

You're never gonna get through to somebody like that in a conversation unless you can demonstrate to them you understand where they're coming from, whether or not you agree.

Early 90s, last century, I'm a last century guy, I'm an old dude.

So terrorist case, New York City, civilian court, terrorism does not have to be tried in military tribunals.

We have Muslims testifying in open court against a legitimate Muslim cleric.

The guy that was on trial had the credentials as a legitimate Muslim cleric.

The people that were testifying against him didn't think he should be advocating murder of innocent people.

We'd sit down with them, Arab Muslims, Egyptians, mostly.

And I would say to them, you believe that there's been a succession of American governments for the last 200 years that are anti-Islamic.

And they'd shake their head and go, yeah.

And that'd be the start of the conversation.

But I showed them that I wasn't afraid of their beliefs.

I was so unafraid of them that I was willing to just state them and not disagree or contradict, because I would say that and then I'd shut up and let them react.

And I never had to say, here's why you're wrong.

Every single 1 of them that testified, that's empathy.

Not agreeing with where the other side is coming from.

I'm not sure how Sam would define it, but common vernacular is it's sympathy and it's compassion.

And there's a gray area, maybe you can comment on it, is sometimes a drop of compassion helps make that empathy more effective in the conversation.

So you just saying you believe X doesn't quite form a strong of a bond with the other

You may be right, yes, I'm imagining it doesn't.

I'm imagining you need to show that you're on the same side.

That you need to signal a little bit about your actual beliefs, at least in that moment, even if that signaling is not as deep as it sounds.

But at first, basically patting the person on the back and saying we're on the same side, brother.

You know, that's what most people, when they're really learning the concept, that's the basic human reaction.

And in application, especially in highly adversarial situations.

Like, I need a regular guy, Muslim, but how's that guy gonna say, buy it, if I like, you know, dude, I'm on your side.

Like if we're on opposite sides of the table and I try to act like I'm not on the opposite side of the table, that makes me disingenuous.

And at some point in time, if you go like, you know where I'm coming from?

My answer's gonna be like, look, I can agree on maybe where we're going, but if we're talking about, you know, am I on your side now?

As a human being, I wanna see you survive and thrive, not at my expense.

I think the world is full of opportunity.

I got more than enough reason for saying that.

So I got no problem with you getting yours.

You know, just don't take it out of my hide.

And I'm gonna be honest about it, about both of those things.

I'm not interested in you taking it out of my hide.

I think there's plenty here for both of us.

Now, I don't need to be on your side, except in a human sense.

But do I have to side with you over the war?

Or how we're distributing the stock, or how much you get paid, or how much you make off this car.

I think people, my experience as a layman, is that Empathy's not got a downside.

That you don't need me to act like I'm on your side for us to make a great deal.

They're often going to be the same thing, but at times they're going to be different.

There is some zoom level at which you do wanna say we're on the same side.

It's possible to say, kind of zoom out and say that we're all in this together.

Not we Slavic people, we Europeans, but we human beings.

Several years ago, and his name has evidently been mud now, but he was very nice to me, lawyer here in town named Tom Girardi, and no shortage of bad reporting on him now.

I have absolutely no idea if any of it's true.

I do know that in my interaction with him, he was always a gentleman to me and was very generous.

When he'd get into conversations with people, he'd always say, let's look at 10 years from now where we could both be in a phenomenal place together.

Yeah, and then I saw him do it in simulations.

I was teaching at USC, we were at a function together, and a gentleman at the time told me who he was and he was really influential.

So I walked up to the guy, Colt, and I said, hey, how about coming and talking to my class at USC?

He didn't know me, other than the fact that we had a mutual acquaintance, and he graciously consented to come in.

And he said, what do you want me to talk about?

I said, look, dude, just from your success here, it doesn't matter what you talk about.

Either I'm gonna agree or I'm gonna disagree or I'm gonna learn from it, my students are gonna learn from it.

So students wanna role play with them, you know, they dispute, let's do a negotiation.

Every single time you go to pick a point in the future where we're both happy 10 years, 20 years from now, and let's work our way back.

I call into a bank, bad guy picks up on the phone, and I'm gonna say, I want you to live.

Let's pick a point in the future that we're both good with and then we work our way back.

And people make also, we were talking before about emotion and what you care about, People make their decisions based on a vision of the future.

I think there's a Hindu temple in the United States has been or being assembled same way that the Hindu temples were in India 1, 000 years ago.

These people are knocking themselves on for a place in paradise, a vision of the future.

What you will go through today, if the future portends what you want, you'll go through incredible things today.

So you have to try to paint a vision of the future that the person you're negotiating with will like.

Let's find out what their vision of the future is, and then remove yourself as a threat.

You know, if we can collaborate together, at all, if you think that I could do anything at all to help you to that point, and you know, integrity's my currency, I'm not gonna lie to you.

Which gets back before, did I lie to you about whether or not I'm on your side?

You know, right now, at the moment, we're on opposite sides of the fence.

That's not gonna stop us from being together in the future.

Inside, you're gonna say, well, you didn't lie to me about today, maybe you won't lie to me about tomorrow.

So going back to world leaders, for example, whether it's Vladimir Zelensky or Vladimir Putin, you don't think it closes off their mind to show that you have a different opinion?

Are you arguing from the beginning or are you displaying understanding from the beginning?

I don't think it stops you from being adversarial.

There was a thing about Manoukian's chapter in his book, The Tension Between Empathy and Assertiveness.

I remember reading that name of the chapter thinking like, you know, in my business there is no tension.

And then I got into it and I read, I thought, this is Red Herring.

He's drawing people in because his entire chapter is that empathy puts you in a position to assert and that there is no tension.

And that's why, again, I think it was written for lawyers.

So you emphasize the importance of, in terms of sequencing and priority of listening, of truly listening to the other person.

How do you truly listen to another human being?

I always hated the term active listening.

And as soon as you start trying to anticipate where somebody's going, you're dialed in more.

Because along the way, either you're congratulating yourself for being right, or when suddenly they say something that surprises you, you really notice it, like, that's not what I expected.

And then 1 of the reasons, you know, we named the book Tactical Empathy.

Named the book, never split the difference, but we're talking about tactical empathy.

First, it was experienced as hostage negotiators, and we've come to find out that our experience as hostage negotiators is backed up by neuroscience.

Another reason why I listen to Andrew Huberman's podcast all the time, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy on the neuroscience.

And so then emotional intelligence calibrated by what we know about neuroscience.

And I'll talk about it from a layman's perspective and even say we is an arrogant thing, you know, human beings.

I'm scooping up as much of it as I can as a layman.

People will argue with you as to what the wiring is and what does what and the limbic system and all of that, but the brain is basically 75% negative.

It's an alignment, I make that contention, number 1.

Number 2, the best way to deactivate negativity is by calling it out.

And I could say, look, I don't want you to be offended by what I'm getting ready to say.

Your guard is up, you're getting ready to get mad.

If I say, what I'm getting ready to say is probably gonna offend you.

Now you relax a little bit and you go, all right, what is it?

And then I say it, whatever it is, and you're gonna be like, oh, that wasn't that bad.

Because we knew from hostage negotiation by calling out the negativity, deactivate it, and then a number of neuroscience experiments have been done right and left by calling out negativity, deactivating the negativity.

So calling out ahead of time, So like acknowledging that this is,

that this is, ahead of time, that this is going to hurt.

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Chris Voss: FBI Hostage Negotiator | Lex Fridman Podcast #364